


tender

by songs



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, anyway have some tender jocks, this is so cheesy and sappy but i'm not even sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 18:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4029964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songs/pseuds/songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oikawa Tooru is a brat. Oikawa Tooru is spoiled and loud and overbearing. He is a walking headache, with long legs and longer eyelashes. He’s gaudy and glittery and smiles with his teeth but rarely with his eyes. He is terrified of talent. He flirts with lunch-ladies for milk-bread and picks out the roots and vegetables from all his bentos. Oikawa Tooru is rude and insufferable and much, much too hard on himself. Oikawa Tooru spends the majority of his time building up walls and driving himself into them.</p><p>Oikawa Tooru is a nightmare.</p><p>And Iwaizumi Hajime is completely in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tender

i. 

Oikawa Tooru is a brat. Oikawa Tooru is spoiled and loud and overbearing. He is a walking headache, with long legs and longer eyelashes.  He’s gaudy and glittery and smiles with his teeth but rarely with his eyes. He is terrified of talent. He flirts with lunch-ladies for milk-bread and picks out the roots and vegetables from all his bentos. Oikawa Tooru is rude and insufferable and much, much too hard on himself. Oikawa Tooru spends the majority of his time building up walls and driving himself into them.

Oikawa Tooru is a nightmare.

And Iwaizumi Hajime is completely in love with him.

ii.

It happens slowly, like most things do with Hajime. On the court, he is lightning-swift, all volleyball-quicks and serves and sprints. But, that is Hajime the ace. Hajime, the _boy,_ enjoys the calm. Lulled mornings, traced with smells of tea and summer. Languid naps after class-time, late breakfasts on Sundays. Hajime treasures these quiet, watercolor times, which are few and far in-between.

So it seems odd, that he would end up falling for Oikawa. At first glance, Oikawa is the opposite of all of this, all of what Hajime  _is._ People often wonder how they even manage to get along. Those people don't _know_. They don't even try to.

Oikawa is softer than people think. Oikawa is gentle with children and generous with compliments. On principle, Oikawa doesn’t lie—not about anything but himself. Hajime learns this firsthand, the same way he learns Oikawa’s rudeness and pettiness and penchant for hiding beneath his own skin. But despite this, or perhaps,  _because of it_ , he is also fragile, in a way that Hajime only catches in stuttered glimpses: limping after rough practices, purple moons, dark beneath his eyelids, the sleep-thick strain to his bright voice. Hajime always notices, and always speaks up, and it doesn’t always  _get_ to Oikawa, but when it does, it’s worth it, worth all the snaps and grunts and  _Assikawa, I’m gonna kick your ass,_ and  _Iwa-chan, you used the word ‘ass’ twice in a six word sentence._ Because those are the rare moments in the many that he is sure that Oikawa understands _,_ understands how much Hajime  _cares,_ and lets it settle into a final:  _Okay, Iwa-chan. Thank you._

Being with Oikawa is peaceful. Not literally speaking—because there often are yells and blows and arguments involved with anything between them. But even so, beyond all that, it’s peaceful, with Oikawa, in a way that is soul-deep, matted with memory. He is sure Oikawa feels the same. Maybe not the same way Hajime feels about  _him,_ but perhaps something close. When they’re alone together, they’re free to sidle into muscle-memory, to speak in hums and soft touches and familiar silence. And it’s peaceful.

iii.

Hajime does not pine for Oikawa. Not that Oikawa isn’t someone worth pining over—he’s sure half the school population has done just that. But Hajime doesn’t pine for him because he  _has_ Oikawa, already. Maybe not in the way he wants him, maybe not  _ever_ in the way he wants him, but that doesn’t make their relationship incomplete. He has Oikawa and Oikawa has him.

That’s enough for Hajime.

This is what he tells himself now, in his bedroom, while he scrawls through his math homework. Oikawa is propped up on the bed, voice singsong as he lilts through the lyrics of some pop-song Hajime has never heard before. It’s Saturday. The sun is gleaming through the window. Oikawa’s eyes are glassy, abyss-deep with concentration. Hajime gets up, looks at what the other boy is holding.

“No,” he says, instantly. “Oikawa, don’t do this.”

Oikawa blinks up at him innocently, folds the volleyball-notes in half. It’s scary how accurate they are, Hajime thinks. He has several positions and arrows and methods written down, all from the match they lost to Karasuno, in the quarterfinals.

“Do what?” Oikawa asks.

Hajime resists the urge to snap at him. He counts backwards from twelve, and when he gets to four, he remembers the edge of a conversation he'd overheard, between Oikawa and Ushijima—

 _You best not forget this worthless pride of mine._

_—_ and sighs. Hajime has Oikawa. And Oikawa has Hajime, on top of his unbreakable pride. It’s the same pride that’s led Oikawa through the years, by the calluses on his hands, the sprains in his legs. 

 _It’s the same pride that led us together,_ Hajime thinks. He remembers a meeting from a lifetime ago: two young boys by a flower-garden, one daring the other to do this, and that.

“Nevermind,” Hajime says, and Oikawa stiffens, clearly not having expected him to give in so easily. “Do what you want.”

“You’re not going to lecture me?” Oikawa flips onto his stomach. “Ne, Iwa-chan?”

“No,” Hajime says, going back to his desk. “Because I understand.”

This shuts Oikawa up. His eyes drift to Hajime’s, and linger. Hajime has to look away. His ears feel hot; maybe he’s become too soft. Too transparent. 

Or maybe’s he’s always been this way, when it comes to Oikawa.

Hajime decides to go with the latter.  Because the next thing he knows, his math notes have been swept aside— _x is fifteen, everything means something, what does_ this _mean—_ and there is a hand there, a pale, pale hand—all translucent skin and veins and bandaids and scars— _I’ll toss to you, whatever it takes—_ and it’s trembling. Hajime looks up at Oikawa. The other boy’s face is starry with tears. It’s not a brave face. It’s not a strong face. But it’s Oikawa’s face, and Hajime thinks it’s beautiful, and—more than anything—he doesn’t want to see it so sad.

“Oikawa,” Hajime says. “I’m here.”

It’s not  _As long as I’m here, you’re invincible._ But it’s enough.  _I’m here._

“I know,” Oikawa says, “I know, Iwa-chan.” His shoulders quake. “Thank you—”

In an instant, Hajime is standing. He wraps his arms around Oikawa, and he's shaking— _both of them_ are shaking, for every lost set and stolen match and unmet yearning—and Oikawa is crying: “I don’t know what to do, anymore. I don’t know  _what to do_.”

Hajime says, “You can do anything you want. Oikawa, you can  _be_  anything you want.”

Oikawa says, “You don’t understand.”

Hajime says, “I told you, I do.”

“You don’t,” Oikawa says, his nose all snotty, eyelashes glimmering. “You don’t—” He doesn’t finish the sentence, because, then, he’s kissing Hajime.

Hajime’s never kissed anyone before. He’s always assumed that Oikawa had kissed plenty of people, but from the mismatched feeling of his lips against Hajime’s, he decides that theory has been thoroughly debunked. Because he’s a show-offy brat, Oikawa tries to take the lead, licks right into Hajime’s mouth. He tastes like chapstick and cherry gum. Hajime has a second to think,  _What am I doing?_ before melting and kissing back.

It goes on for a long while, and then Hajime has to breathe. He pulls away, perplexed, but also transfixed by the red in Oikawa’s cheeks and lips. They stare at each other for a good few moments, before Hajime asks:

“Why?”

Oikawa murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

Again, Hajime asks, “Why?”

“It’s selfish,” Oikawa says, and Hajime can’t help but fondly think,  _what else is new?_ “But I did it because I wanted to.”

For a third time, Hajime asks, “Why?”

Oikawa takes a deep breath:

iv.

“I’m sorry, Iwa-chan. I know I’m awful, sometimes. I know. I know I want too many things and I try too hard and make mistakes and fall. I always fall. But  _you_ always pick me up. You always push me forward. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. That scares me. I don’t know if we’ll go to the same university or have the same inside jokes or use the same nicknames or ever play volleyball together again. But I still want that. Sometimes…I want even more than that. I want to win games and be happy, but none of that compares at all to how much I want  _you_.”

v.

Hajime stares. And stares and stares.

At last, he manages, “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” Oikawa says, again. “For what I did. But not for my feelings.”

Hajime laughs, and Oikawa stiffens. 

“Don’t laugh at me!”

Hajime holds up a hand. “I can’t help it, idiot.”

“Why?” Oikawa challenges.

 _How the tables have turned._ Hajime says, “You don’t understand.”

Oikawa says, “I really don’t.”

Hajime doesn’t either. Hajime doesn’t know what to do with this new bit of information— _Oikawa kissed him, Oikawa kissed him, now what?_ —doesn’t know what he and Oikawa going to do with themselves, even just a few months down the line. He doesn’t know what he and Oikawa are, or where they’re going to end up or where fate’s going to lead them, but that’s something to sort out for another day.

Hajime is not good with words. But he’s good with Oikawa.

Gently, he takes Oikawa's hand. Meets his eyes.

Then, he’s leaning in—

vi.

Oikawa Tooru is a nightmare. Hajime can easily recall a number of occasions from childhood which earned him that title: the time Oikawa poured honey into Hajime’s hair, the time he made Hajime push his bicycle up a hill, while he sat on it, the time he gave Hajime the flu. 

But Hajime stuck with him. For all time, Hajime stuck by Oikawa, and never, ever once thought to leave.

Because while Oikawa can be cruel, he can also be very kind. Oikawa can leave bruises with words, but will mend them better right after. Oikawa seems selfish, and maybe he  _is,_ but in the most selfless way—the way of someone who has no qualms with bringing out the best in everyone around him. The way of someone who kisses their best friend and apologizes right after, lost completely in the universe of one moment, one person.

 _I want you, too,_ he’d said back.  _More than anything._

(No matter what, Hajime loves him.)

**Author's Note:**

> am i capable of fully developing a plot ever ? was all this corniness necessary? the world may never know ｖ(*´∀｀*)ｖ


End file.
